Sweden needs to take a lead in humanistic and social scientific perspectives on AI

2020-03-09

Amanda Lagerkvist, Senior Lecturer at Uppsala University, is project leader in the WASP-HS project BioMe: Existential challenges and ethical imperatives of biometric AI in everyday Lifeworlds. Lagerkvist talk about the project and humanistic and social scientific perspectives on AI in a blog post at the WASP-HS web.

Debunking myths about the technological sublime is old news for anyone in media and communication studies. Qualified problematization of media constituted the very birthright of our discipline one hundred years ago, and sits at the heart of our training as media scholars.

Indeed, such a knee-jerk reaction – to always politicize, sociologize, historicize and contextualize ‘new’ media technologies and their consequences – is both welcome and much-needed also for the current hype and hysteria of AI. And yet, moving beyond myth is only the beginning, and it is not enough. We also need to provide perspective, to bring visions to the table for a critical and creative engagement with these developments. This is precisely what we in the WASP-HS project I’m heading, BioMe: Existential Challenges and Ethical Imperatives of Biometric Artificial Intelligence in Everyday Lifeworlds, hope to deliver.